In my upcoming book Mind Over Medicine: Scientific Proof You Can Heal Yourself (Hay House, 2013) and in many recent blog posts such as this, this, and this, I talk a lot about the mind’s power to heal the body. But when you or a loved one is sick, how do you know when to employ the mind’s self-healing powers versus when to get thee to an emergency room lickety split?
Knowing how to integrate the mind’s healing powers into the world of conventional medicine can be tricky, so I wanted to lay out some guidelines. But first, a story…
When Grendel Couldn’t Heal Herself
As I wrote about in this post, Grendel the Mojo Pup recently fell off the bed. Initially, she picked herself up, brushed herself off, and went about her merry business. My six year old Siena has been intentionally brainwashed to believe she can heal herself and so can Grendel (those empowering positive beliefs downloaded into her subconscious mind will stay there for the rest of her life unless she consciously reprograms them, and I am very mindful that I want to make sure she knows how much power she has to heal herself, rather than programming her to believe she must always seek help outside herself.) So, because of her programmed beliefs, after Grendel fell, Siena kept saying to her, “Grendel, you can heal yourself.”
Then, four days later, after Grendel had been progressively improving, she woke up severely short of breath. As we were racing her to the vet ER, I was explaining to Siena that although I believe it’s almost always possible for the mind to heal the body, sometimes all of our best efforts to make this happen leave us still sick. And because we want to ensure that we’re doing everything we can to optimize our chances of getting well, especially when a life may be at risk, we often need to seek outside help.